Commentary on Unitarian Universalist faith development in congregations and the wider liberal religious community

29 November 2008

It's Amazing Where Religion Leads Some Folks ...

It's amazing to find where religion leads some folks.

Imagine a British woman of Sub-Saharan African descent who became a "born-again Christian" and is now defending the institution of slavery because "slavery is not wrong."

Apparently if it were wrong, God would have condemned it in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures - here's the money quote from this blogger:

The bible does not condemn slavery. So Christians try to act like Job's friends and try to defend God in a rather foolish way by condemning slavery, as if God forgot to do it Himself in the bible. I think this is a very unwise thing for a Christian to do because if slavery was wrong, God would have said so himself. But He doesn't say its wrong. As John MacArthur says in his study bible, " The New Testament nowhere directly attacks slavery; had it done so, the resulting slave insurrections would have been brutally suppressed and the message of the gospel hopelessly confused with that of social reform.

Of course another possibility is that the authors of the slavery-supporting Bible verses are simply wrong for defending slavery.

[Hat tip to Evolved and Rat/i/onal (Religion exploits unpatched vulnerabilities in the human mind) and Pharyngula (PZ Myers' blog) for finding this unusual perspective on slavery and the Bible for us.]

Well I was, and still am, quite prepared to take your word for that Steve. Anyone who doubts you need only click on Mberenis' blogger profile. ;-)

The last time I checked religion led some folks to fly passenger jet planes into the "Twin Towers" of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, to say nothing of a field in Pennsylvania. And those are by no means the worst places that people have been led to by their religious beliefs. Technically the "The Virtuous Woman" aka Jean is right. Not only is slavery not condemned in the Bible it is condoned and even officially sanctioned by God in some sections of the "Old Testament" if I am not mistaken. I wonder if Jean meticulously follows all the Biblical laws in Leviticus?